Redirects 101

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Do curso por University of California, Davis

Search Engine Optimization Fundamentals

905 ratings

University of California, Davis

Search Engine Optimization Fundamentals

905 ratings

Curso 2 de 6 em Specialization Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Gain an understanding of search engine algorithms and how they affect organic search results and websites. Building on this knowledge, you’ll learn the key elements for creating an effective SEO strategy, including how to select keywords and perform keyword research; consumer psychology and search behavior; and how to conduct on-page SEO analysis to identify opportunities to improve a website’s search optimization.

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Introduction to Technical SEO

Welcome to week 3! In the lessons that follow, you will take a close look at the third leg of a solid SEO Strategy: Technical SEO. You’ll see how important structural components like sitemaps, redirects and other components lay a foundation for your content that will help your site get noticed. By the end of this module, you should be able to define Technical SEO and explain some of the basic aspects of this strategy. As you begin creating sitemaps and robot.txt files as well as planning redirects and managing site errors, you’ll learn how to employ best practices in your Technical SEO strategy.

Introduction to Technical SEO1:05

Laying the Structural Foundation With Technical SEO2:24

HTML Sitemap vs. XML Sitemap8:37

The robots.txt File Protocol6:30

Overcoming Pesky Error Codes6:43

Redirects 1018:37

404 Pages Best Practices5:14

Conheça os instrutores

Rebekah May
SEO Manager & Lead SEO Instructor, Lead Qual
UC Davis Division of Continuing and Professional Education

Hello.

So far, we've learned about the importance of technical SEO, and

how site maps, robust .textfiles and

error codes figure into your application of a technical SEO strategy.

In this lesson, we will introduce you to several types of redirects,

including permanent redirects, temporary redirects, and the meta refresh.

We'll then consider how to appropriately and

effectively use these redirects in specific situations.

In this past lesson, we discussed a variety of HTTP status codes.

Other types of status codes are redirects.

At times, a web master may decide to remove a page from their website,

or replace that page with a newer, more updated page.

When this occurs, it's a good idea to send users who land on the old,

removed page to the new, updated page.

One way to easily do this is through a redirect,

which will automatically transfer the visitor to the new page.

Most of the time, users don't even notice a redirect occurred.

However, when a page is redirected, an HTTP status code is presented.

This code provides search engines

with instructions on how they should handle that page going forward.

There are many types of redirects we are concerned with for SEO.

Let's take a moment to discuss the main types of redirects

SEO should be familiar with.

The first type is a permanent redirect or a 301 HTTP status code.

The next is a temporary redirect or a 302 HTTP status code.

A newer version of the 302 is a 307 redirect.

But you will still usually see 302s or 301s.

In most cases, you want to use a permanent redirect,

as this tells search engines that the page no longer exists and

the page it is redirecting to is now its permanent substitute.

This means that search engines will eventually credit the new page with

the trust the old page had built up.

This can help the newer page rank as well as the older page did in search results.

Temporary redirects,

on the other hand, tell search engines, that the redirect is only in place for

a limited time, and to not transfer any trust to the redirected version.

In some cases, a temporary redirect is best.

In these cases,

are when the page is only temporarily redirected to a different page.

This may happen if you're performing site maintenance.

These issues are usually rare however, so

an SEO we generally always recommend a 301.

Another type of redirect, which is rarely used but

you should know about, is called a meta refresh.

Unlike the previous types of redirects,

no HTTP status code is presented with a meta refresh.

This is because the redirect is executed at the page level

rather than by the server itself.

These redirects are usually slower and

users are more likely to notice they've been redirected.

When this occurs, you will often see a message like,

If you are not redirected within five seconds, click here.

Meta refreshes are not generally recommended, because they do not provide

clear signals to search engines about what happened to the previous page.

Additionally, these types of redirect can create a poor user experience.

A big reason to recommend 301 redirects over 302 redirects

is that the permanent redirect will pass what is called link juice or

authority of the first page to the second page.

This means that the authority received from links pointing to the old page

is transferred to the new page.

Note, however, that while these pass the majority of authority from

one page to the next, some of the authority will be lost.

It's estimated that approximately 5% of the total

authority of the page is lost when redirecting.

While this is very minimal,

it is something you should be aware of when recommending redirects.

For example, if you removed or redirected a page within your site, it's considered

a best practice to update links within your site that point to the new page.

Rather than continuing to link to the old page that's being redirected.

Note that the redirect is still necessary so any outside links are still redirected

to their correct page, but internal links should always be updated appropriately.

A temporary, or 302 redirect, on the other hand,

passes little to no authority, and this keeps the old page in the index.

This is one of the reason why 302 redirects are not a good idea for SEO.

Due to potential loss of authority when redirecting,

you also want to be careful of chaining redirects.

This is when you may have redirected page A to page B in the past at one point, and

then decided later that page B is no longer valid and

decided to redirect page B to page C.

In instances like this, it is best to redirect page A to page C,

and page B to page C rather than having redirects in the middle.

Because some of the authority is lost with the redirect,

you will be able to retain more authority if the redirects are not chained.

This can happen a lot with old sites that have gone through multiple redesigns and

is something to look out for when auditing a site.

When redirecting older pages to new pages, it's a good idea to redirect the old page

to a page that best matches the previous content and theme of the old page.

Many people tend to simply redirect all old pages to their homepage.

This is not semantically relevant from a search engine perspective.

Additionally, this leads to a poor user experience

as the user expected to land on a page about a certain topic, but

was instead sent to the home page without any hints at what to do next.

Redirecting to the homepage is only advised

if there is not a better page to redirect the original content to.

Ideally, the order of preference would be to redirect to a specific page.

And if one doesn't exist, redirect to a category level page.

And if that doesn't exist,

then you may want to consider redirecting to the home page.

For example, let's say we had a site about gift baskets.

And one of the products we had available

was a get well soon teddy bear with flowers.

This product is no longer offered.

The ideal way to redirect this page would be to first look

at another similar product such as a "get well soon" teddy bear with a balloon.

If no products matched that then next best option would

be to redirect the page to the "get well soon" gifts category.

If for example the site was totally removing all "get well soon" gifts and

no longer had a category page about that subject,

then the next best choice might be the home page.

You should now have a good understanding of redirects and

be able to explain what a redirect is,

recommend the best types of redirects to use in a specific situation, and

provide recommendations on where a page should be redirected to within a site.

That completes the video portion of this lesson.

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